TOM YUILL
SAETA
freely after Antonio Machado
Tendrils groping,
blood
on Christ’s hands,
songs of nails torn
from Christ’s
wrists,
the songs
Andalusions
sing every spring
in search of
Christ’s
pain.
Their prayers
are like ladders,
each day a bouquet
for the Christ
of the Passion.
Who do you
love?
Who chews
off his leg
to get
out
amble-
tumbling, as
each wince swims
against
the
tug of
the
mouths
of the past?
They
skin us—
those songs.
Not
to
pietas in
Christ’s pained
face
do I sing,
but the flower,
ancient,
that glides
in the night,
to Christ
as he
walks
on the
water.
ACOUSTIC SHADOW OF BALLADE DES PENDUS
Villon
Freres humaines, qui aprez nous vivez,
don’t let your hearts get hard: the more
you pity us, the more God pities you.
Not for you, to you, Brothers, do we pray.
We hang here by our necks, and Hell
and bile and hard tack acne glisten.
Magpies on our shoulders dab
our swollen cheeks. We’re scab
and bloated flesh, don’t laugh, just listen.
God loves, but doesn’t save us from ourselves.
We hang, we guess,
for not obeying laws, but see:
among us all just some will pass
as living their lives legally.
Hell’s thunder whelps
us, Virgin Mary kisses us,
on Sundays sing the birth of Christ,
but neither Christ nor Mary save us from ourselves.
Lashed by sun, ligaments dried
and slapped by the dark, then kissed,
our brows are plucked, eyes
too. Cheeks like swollen thimbles. No mist,
no rest from whipped
snow, never at peace.
We once decided what to do,
Now here, now there—we’re swept that way and this.
Fuss of fat through thimble holes
the crows peck in our cheeks. Condemn us but don’t hate us,
people. God won’t save you from yourselves.
Prince Jesus of bodies and of souls, just
keep us out of Hell. No wealth, nor hatred,
do we seek. Just people, please don’t send us there.
Prince Jesus doesn’t save us from ourselves.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom Yuill’s first book of poetry, “Medicine Show,” is published by the University of Chicago Press. He has poetry, translations and interviews published or forthcoming in Great River Review, A Public Space, Newsday, Literary Imaginations, Salamander and Dalhousie Review and featured on Poetry Daily, among others. Yuill is writing a literary biography of Francois Villon containing his own translations, adaptations, imitations and acoustic shadows of Villon’s poetry. He teaches in the World Languages and Cultures Department, Honors College, English Department, and guest lectures in the French Department, at Old Dominion University, and recently completed the first draft of his next book of poetry. Yuill also teaches various poetry classes at the Muse Writer’s Center in Virginia, and in the English Department at Norfolk State University.